Friday, 12 January 2018

Many people in my Twitter timeline have been calling for another referendum on Brexit. Since most of the people I follow regard Brexit as an unmitigated disaster, one can see they are desperate to adopt any measure that might stop it.

Things have now got even more interesting with arch-Brexiteer, Nigel Farage, calling yesterday for another referendum. Unless he is playing a particularly complicated game, he presumably also thinks that his side will win – and with an increased majority that will ensure that Brexit is not disrupted.

Let me be clear. I think Brexit is a disaster. But I really do not think another referendum is a good idea. If there's one thing that the last referendum demonstrated, it is that this is a terrible method for making political decisions on complicated issues.

I'm well-educated and well-read, yet at the time of the referendum, I understood very little about how the EU worked. My main information came from newspapers and social media – including articles such as this nuanced and thoughtful speech on the advantages and disadvantages of EU membership by Theresa May. (The contrast between this and her current mindless and robotic pursuit of extreme Brexit is so marked that I do wonder if she has been kidnapped and brainwashed at some point).

I was pretty sure that it would be bad for me as a scientist to lose opportunities to collaborate with European colleagues, and at a personal level I felt deeply European while also proud of the UK as a tolerant and fair-minded society. But I did not understand the complicated financial, legal, and trading arrangements between the UK and Europe, I had no idea of possible implications for Northern Ireland – this topic was pretty much ignored by the media that I got my information from. As far as I remember, debates on the topic on the TV were few and far between, and were couched as slanging matches between opposite sides – with Nigel Farage continually popping up to tell us about the dangers of unfettered immigration. I remember arguing with a Brexiteer group in Oxford Cornmarket who were distributing leaflets about the millions that would flow to the NHS if we left the EU, but who had no evidence to back up this assertion. There were some challenges to these claims on radio and TV, but the voices of impartial experts were seldom heard.

After the referendum, there were some stunning interviews with the populace exploring their reasons for voting. News reporters were despatched to Brexit hotspots, where they interviewed jubilant supporters, many of whom stated that the UK would now be cleansed of foreigners and British sovereignty restored. Some of them also mentioned funding of the NHS: the general impression was that being in the EU meant that an emasculated Britain had to put up with foreigners on British soil while at the same time giving away money to foreigners in Europe. The EU was perceived as a big bully that took from us and never gave back, and where the UK had no voice. The reporters never challenged these views, or asked about other issues, such as financial or other benefits of EU membership.

Of course there were people who supported Brexit for sound, logical reasons, but they seemed to be pretty thin on the ground. A substantial proportion of those voting seemed swayed by arguments about decreasing the number of foreigners in the UK and/or spending money on the NHS rather than 'giving it to Europe'.

Remainers who want another referendum seem to think that, now we've seen the reality of the financial costs of Brexit, and the exodus of talented Europeans from our hospitals, schools, and universities, the populace will see through the deception foisted on them in 2016. I wonder. If Nigel Farage wants a referendum, this could simply mean that he is more confident than ever of his ability to manipulate mainstream and social media to play on people's fears of foreigners. We now know more about sophisticated new propaganda methods that can be used on social media, but that does not mean we have adequate defences against them.

The only thing that would make me feel positive about a referendum would be if you had to demonstrate that you understood what you were voting for. You'd need a handful of simple questions about factual aspects of EU membership – and a person's vote would only be counted if these questions were accurately answered. This would, however, disenfranchise a high proportion of voters, and would be portrayed as an attack on democracy. So that is not going to happen. I think there's a strong risk that if we have another referendum, it will either be too close to call, or give the same result as before, and we'll be no further ahead.

But the most serious objection to another referendum is that it is a flawed method for making political decisions. As noted in this blogpost:

(A referendum requires) a complex, and often emotionally charged issue, to be reduced to a binary yes/no question. When considering a relationship the UK has been in for over 40 years a simple yes/no or “remain/leave” question raises many complex and inter-connected questions that even professional politicians could not fully answer during or after the campaign. The EU referendum required a largely uninformed electorate to make a choice between the status quo and an extremely unpredictable outcome.

Rather than a referendum, I'd like to see decisions about EU membership made by those with considerable expertise in EU affairs who will make an honest judgement about what is in the best interests of the UK. Sadly, that does not seem to be an option offered to us.